Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a fast-growing type of lung cancer, and it spreads much more quickly than non-small cell lung cancer. There are three different types of small cell lung cancer: small cell carcinoma (oat cell cancer), mixed small cell/large cell carcinoma, and combined small cell carcinoma. Most small cell lung cancers are the oat cell type.
About 15% of all lung cancer cases are small cell lung cancer. SCLC is the most aggressive form of lung cancer. It usually starts in the breathing tubes (bronchi) in the center of the chest. Although the cancer cells are small, they grow very quickly and create large tumors. These tumors often spread rapidly (metastasize) to other parts of the body, including the brain, liver, and bone. As a result, this type of cancer is very deadly. Only about 6% of people with SCLC survive 5 years after diagnosis.
Currently, there are about 40,000 new cases of SCLC patients per year. Present treatments of SCLC generally involve high-dose combination chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy [10-20]. Although there is a high initial response rate to these treatments, and long-term survival in up to 10% of all cases [19-20], average life expectancy is increased by only 8-15 months. While about 80% of these newly diagnosed SCLC patients respond to chemotherapy, remission generally lasts only 3-6 months. Unfortunately, there is no effective therapy to treat recurrent disease because it is resistant to available approaches, including chemotherapies. Therefore, a pressing need exists for new approaches for effective treatment that would provide long-term survival for SCLC patients.
Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among women throughout the world, and accounts for the death of approximately 50,000 women in the United States each year [8]. Although there have been many recent advances for effectively treating this disease [9], successful intervention still relies heavily on early detection through mammography and surgical removal. Therefore, a pressing need exists for a reliable and universal tumor marker system in breast cancer that could provide, advanced warnings of early post-oncogenic tissue changes, precise methods for identifying and evaluating changes in tumor burden and, additional new non-surgical methods of treatment that are effective in terms of providing long-term survival for patients.
Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading causes of death from cancer among women throughout the world, and accounts for the death of approximately 16,000 women in the United States each year (Young, Gynecologic Malignancies in J. N. Jameson, D. L. Kasper, T. R. Harrison, E. Braunwald, A. S. Fauci, S. L. Hauser, D. L. Longo (eds) Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 16th Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, N.Y., 2005). Although there have been many recent advances for effectively treating this disease (Goff et al., “Ovarian carcinoma diagnosis,” Cancer 89: 2068-2075, 2000; Chobanian and Dietrich, “Ovarian Cancer,” Surg. Clin. North Amer. 88:285-299, 2008), successful intervention still relies heavily on early detection and surgical removal. Therefore, a pressing need exists for the development of new non-surgical methods of treatment that are effective in terms of providing long-term survival for patients, and precise methods for identifying and evaluating changes in tumor burden.
The expression of the vasopressin gene is largely restricted to hypothalamic neurons, and it encodes for a protein product of ˜17 kDa, to which an N-glycosidic side-chain of ˜4 kDa is added, resulting in the ˜20 kDa provasopressin (pro-VP) precursor. This protein is normally packaged into secretory vesicles where it undergoes enzymatic cleavage to generate vasopressin (VP), VP-associated neurophysin (VP-NP), and VP-associated glycopeptide (VAG) (North, W. G. In: D. Gash and G. Boer (eds.), Vasopressin: Principles and Properties, pp. 175-209. New York: Plenum Press, 1987). These components are then secreted into the circulation.